Is The Far Right In Retreat?

Here in America the 2020 defeat of Donald Trump is seen by some as a rejection of the far right authoritarianism that Trump loved and pandered to, especially as he acted as Vladimir Putin's village idiot.  Now, while the far right remains the biggest threat for domestic terrorism - the January 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, the majority of Americans seemingly want leaders who support democracy and who offer a calm and competent handling of the threats and problems facing the nation as opposed to the incompetent reality TV show offered by Trump.  As a column in Washington Post suggests, this development in America may be taking place in other parts of the world where the attractiveness of the far right may be fading, or so one can hope.  Here are column excerpts:

There’s a long-standing habit among Americans of reading our own politics as a signal for where the whole democratic world is moving. Sometimes it’s justified. Ronald Reagan’s election was clearly part of a broad movement toward the free-market right in the 1980s. Bill Clinton’s embrace of a centrist brand of progressivism in the 1990s was widely imitated.

So is a Joe Biden wave forming out there? Perhaps more importantly, has the drift toward right-wing authoritarianism that Donald Trump’s ascendancy seemed to herald been checked?

Of course it’s early, and many key national elections — in Germany and France, for example — lie in the future. But voting in the Netherlands last week and recent state elections in Germany and Australia point to a covid-era seriousness about government’s responsibilities, a search for democratic stability after a series of right-wing uprisings, and a redefining of progressive politics in a green direction.

[T]hese things don’t necessarily suggest a Biden wave, but they do point toward the same sensibility that led to his election. Activism with a moderate tone, competence and focus in ending the pandemic, alertness about climate change — these approaches are being embraced by the center-left, but also by parts of the moderate right.

Here’s the most striking fact about the Dutch vote, two state elections in Germany and an election in Western Australia: The incumbents did well in all of them. And while parties of the far right in the Netherlands and Germany held their own — advancing a bit in the Netherlands, moving backward in Germany — their surge has been checked. They are no longer, as they were in the Trump years, at the center of the news.

“Their priorities now are a stable government and reliable politicians,” University of Amsterdam political scientist Matthijs Rooduijn said in an interview, “and they see Rutte as someone who can lead the country out of the crisis.”

Coming in a surprisingly strong second was the ever-so-slightly left-of-center D66 party, partners in Rutte’s last government — and who expect to join him again and hope to move the next government in a more progressive direction, particularly on climate.

In Germany . . . . The Greens have been surging nationally and threaten to displace the Social Democrats, Germany’s traditional center-left party.

Until last Sunday’s vote, Merkel’s extraordinary durability made a government without the Christian Democrats seem inconceivable. Now, said Olaf Scholz, the Social Democrats’ national candidate, voters can see the possibility of a majority without the Christian Democrats.

Finally, in Western Australia, incumbent Premier Mark McGowan converted exceptional personal popularity arising from his handling of the pandemic into an astonishing sweep. His center-left Labor Party won 53 of the 59 seats in the state parliament.

Perhaps the clearest signal of the shift in the political winds from an expressive nationalist politics to pragmatic reform is Rutte’s path to his fourth victory. A politician skilled at reading public sentiment, Rutte offered a tough line on immigration in the last election to push back against the far-right surge. He has not walked away from that position, but he moved toward the center this time with a program for more affordable child care, raising the minimum wage and expanding clean energy subsidies.

If nothing else, Biden’s defeat of Trump has shifted the momentum away from the global far right. And the pandemic and growing concerns about the climate have made electorates more practically minded and more focused on results. That’s progress.